


Living Dead Memories

by cherrymousey



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blackwatch Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, F/M, Original Character(s), Original Character-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-26 06:21:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20925587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherrymousey/pseuds/cherrymousey
Summary: Gabriel Reyes should be dead, or so she thought.





	Living Dead Memories

**Author's Note:**

> Part of a trade with @LuckyyKat on twitter!

It was supposed to have been a routine mission. Infiltrate Talon, get their plans, and get out. If a couple of Talon's soldiers happened to disappear or die along the way, who was gonna say anything? 

At least, that what Leah had thought. That's what Blackwatch had been told. That's what everyone had been told. Nobody knew that a Talon lackey had been the informant, not even Jack had been aware. Talon had gotten good at covering their tracks, and especially good at hiding their involvement until the last possible minute. 

Of course she should've expected something to go wrong. Something always does. What she hadn't expected was the capture. The weird clawed gloves closing around her mouth, her comms fizzing out, the world going black, and the last sound she heard having been heartbreakingly familiar as she slipped into unconsciousness.

"Stay still."

The inky blackness of her mind swam and moved, ripples on the waters surface that brought forth memories triggered by that voice. It still sounded so warm, even though it rang and echoed like footsteps on a dead man's haunting ground. 

She thought about Halloween, when she had seen Gabriel come out with a pumpkin head, the pumpkin's sinister grin was thwarted by the warm laughter from inside. She thought about how he had always been soft with her, and always brutally honest.

Memory after memory flooded her mind, and in her state of unconsciousness she felt like she was drowning. She couldn't seem to find the surface, until she hit a glass ceiling and realized she was trapped. Looking through the foggy glass, she watched the scene she feared most replay.

The fire. The explosion. The screaming. Everyone being dragged from the rubble. McCree, unconcious and missing an arm, with Gage sobbing uncontrollably as he squeezed the nub while Mercy rushed over. Genji laying on a cot, several still-human parts crushed so horribly he looked like he had been run over in a looney tunes film. She looked around, and then she saw him. Gabe. Bloody, not breathing. 

The scene swirled and flashed, and she saw herself, running into the morgue as the alarms blared in the background. She watched herself check every last cold, empty locker for Gabe's body. She saw the minute she had broken, screaming and smashing medical instruments, slinging cold steel tables across the room in a blind fury as her eyes itched and burned. 

She smashed through the glass then, refusing to watch any longer. And as she came to, she awoke under a single buzzing light, finding herself strapped into a chair in an otherwise completely dark room. 

Interrogation. 

It wasn't the first time Leah had found herself in a Talon interrogation room. Usually they were much nicer, quieter and less eye-straining. No, this looked too much like what they worked with at Blackwatch. Not that Jack would know they still operated that way, for all he knew they were using the cushy Overwatch versions and getting everything they needed in well-lit circumstances. 

She closed her eyes, focused on the sounds around her. Sure enough, in the darkness around her, someone was waiting. She could hear their breathing, slow and clearly controlled. She opened her eyes then. 

"You might as well come out and get this over with, bud. I'm not a patient woman." Leah taunted, tilting her head back to look up at the light above her. "I'm not much for the spotlight, you know. Brings out my pores too much." 

Sure enough, her provocation was followed by heavy footsteps. They circled her, once, twice. Then the figure came into sight, stepping out of the darkness in front of her. The costume was honestly ridiculous. She had seen pictures of this new Talon agent before, black and red leather and a mask that resembled a skull and an owl all at once. She remembered seeing it before somewhere else, too, but couldn't quite remember where. 

"Whoa, edgelord underscore seven two four. Nice costume, where'd you buy it? Spirt Halloween?" Leah joked, snorting a laugh as she watched this bulky person stand in front of her. She had long since learned Talon didn't handle jokes well, it threw their entire game off. It gave her time to free her hands, if nothing else. 

"Be quiet." The voice again, but this time clearly from behind the mask. It was distorted, almost wraith-like. But she knew it. It sounded so much like him, but she refused to let herself believe it could be. He wouldn't be with Talon. She wouldn't believe it. But the funny thing about the human mind is that it can't dispute facts. 

She stared as the figure reached one clawed hand up towards the mask, grasping the white plate and slowly pulling it away as the other hand tugged the hood of the costume down. Leah watched in horror as her mind raced to look at each individual feature.

Gabe. Even though he bore a paler, tired complexion. Even though the scars on his face were deep and obvious. Even though the damage to one side of his face was on par with something out of a horror novel and she could see one side of his teeth completely through a horribly torn and scarred jaw. It was Gabriel. And she felt so much at once that it could kill her.

"You... you motherfucker!" Leah screamed, the shock wearing off quickly as she thrashed in her restraints. "We thought you were dead! We thought you were fucking dead but I swear when I get out of this fucking chair you're going to wish you were!"

The rage in her body didn't seem to come as a shock to Gabe. He looked tired more than anything, and he frowned with the one side of his mouth that could. 

"Leah, listen-" Gabe began, taking a step forward as the woman lunged and snapped the restraints on her hands that she had slowly been working free of. Had her feet been free, he was sure she could've succeeded. Instead, as she fell forward, he reached out and caught her, preventing her from falling flat on her face. 

"No, you listen! Do you have any idea how long we looked for you after your body went missing?! Do you?!!! Do you have any fucking clue how many resources I begged Jack to pour into finding you?!" Leah screeched, drawing back and punching Gabe square in his poorly reformed jaw. He didn't flinch, but he did settle her with a glare.

"If you would shut the hell up for two seconds and listen to me, maybe you'd understand why I couldn't let you find me, _amada_!" Gabe snapped, glaring at the woman in his arms with all the fire of a dying ember. Leah felt herself bs struck silent by the phrase of endearment, and as Gabe moved to sit her back down, he unbound her feet as well.

"You know… when I used to ask you to tie me up? I didn't mean it like this." Leah attempted to joke, despite the dying anger and the bubbling relief that threatened to bring tears to her eyes. If nothing else, she heard the faintest hint of a laugh from Gabe. It sounded hollow, empty. It made her heart hurt.

"Talon stole my body from the morgue, and the sick bastards used Moira's research and the technology she stole from Overwatch to bring me back to life." Leah remembered the day Moira defected. She remembered Mercy filing the claim for missing medical equipment and research files, and she remembered everyone's suspect being Moira. It was apparently true, then. 

"They did the same thing to me they tried to do to Widowmaker before Blackwatch stopped it. For literal months I was trapped inside my own body, watching someone else pull the strings. I watched myself kill innocent people, soldiers, doctors… kids." Gabe's voice trailed into a whisper at that last bit, and Leah knew how much pain must be working it's way through the man's mind. She wanted to reach out to him, but something in her told her to let him finish. 

"Gabe." She whispered, eyes stinging with tears she refused to shed. Not right now. She could cry when this was all over, when she wasn't a soldier.

"They thought it was permanent. They thought one session was a universal cure-all for disobedience, a one-dose drug to turn anyone into their eternal puppet. But dead men have a pretty strong sense of self, I guess. I kept playing along, and I knew I couldn't see you any other way. I couldn't get to you to tell you I was alive without playing their game."

"So you kidnapped me." Leah, deadpan, looked into Gabe's glassy eyes like he was stupid. Risk had never been a problem before, why would it matter now?

"If you decide to go back to base, why don't you ask Jack who the tip was?" Gabe retorted, raising an eyebrow as Leah's eyes widened.

"I'm gonna kill him. I'm actually going to kill him." Gabe's hand on hers calmed her for a moment, and as she looked back at him, she started to understand. "You don't want me to go back, do you?"

Gabe stood up then, pulling her up with him. His hands rested on her arms, firm and gentle like they always had been, if only a little colder. She moved closer, pressing her head into his chest as she let her eyes close and wrapped her arms around his waist. Some part of her couldn't seem to believe any of this was real, and she needed to hold him to know it was.

"I don't. And I don't want either of us to stay anywhere near Talon, either." Gabe explained, wrapping his arms around the woman to hold her close. It had been too long. He had stayed around this long just for her, after all. To hold her again at least once was what this entire stupid plan had been about, anyway. "I talked to Jack when I gave him the tip. He said to call him if we decided. There's a nice place, big enough for us on some land. It's supposed to be his when he retires, he already owns it. Its secluded, private." 

"You're suggesting we run away." Leah spoke softly, lifting her head to look at the man she had fallen in love with all that time ago. Gabe met her gaze, and although his eyes were glossy with living death, they held the same warmth they always had. If only for her. 

She stood on the tips of her toes, just barely tall enough to wrap her arms around Gabe's neck and pull him down into the kiss. If his lips were a little cold, she didn't mind. She'd marry a corpse without a second thought as long as it was still him.

When she pulled away, Gabe squeezed her tight.

"It that a yes?" He looked hopeful, and for the first time in the entire encounter they both found themselves smiling. Admittedly, Gabe still had some difficulty with it. Kind of hard to smile with only half the lips you're supposed to have, after all. But she could see what he was trying to do, and if she thought it looked silly, she didn't say anything.

"I don't run away, but maybe I can make one exception. That is, if you have a plan to get us out of here." Gabe's eyes twinkled with mischief, something Leah hadn't seen in a very long time.

"You know, Akande has a private plane. I'm not saying a stole his keys, but…" Gabe's smug look made her entire body shake with laughter.

"I fucking love you."


End file.
